Featured
Trump’s Rorschach: The Long Shadow Behind a Racist Trope. By Ronald J. Sheehy, Editor / On Race in America
To fully understand Donald Trump’s use of a racist trope—depicting the Obamas as apes—requires more than outrage or dismissal. It requires both a historical and psychological lens. We should not look away. Moments like this are not aberrations; they are windows into the racial contours of America. Read more
The Week’s Top Stories
Political / Social
Our President Is Truly the Ugliest American. By David Rothkopf / Daily Beast
Every morning, the most optimistic among us wake up and check their news feeds in the hope that something has happened overnight that will bring an end to our shared national nightmare.
Trump, for his part, however, daily tries to find new ways to drive home the message that never has a lesser man held high office in America, never has a more defective human being had so much power in our country. Read more
Related: Trump’s Profiteering Hits $4 Billion. David D. Kirkpatrick / The New Yorker
Related: Newly unmasked evidence shows who put Trump in the White House. By Thom Hartmann / MSN
Related: The MAGA masses are finally waking up. By
The Fight Is Upon Us: What The Right to Vote Looks Like on Trump’s Terrain of Violence. By Josh Marshall / TPM
Both the calendar and the events in Minneapolis have brought the midterm elections suddenly into focus.
This also comes as polls, which for much of 2025 were more tepid for Democrats than many hoped, have moved more clearly into wave territory. The upshot of all these data points is that Democrats, unsurprisingly, are prepped for a strong midterm showing … as long as the votes are fairly counted. Or to put it a different way, if Donald Trump is looking to avoid losing the House in November and possibly the Senate, him getting more popular or running a super good midterm campaign probably isn’t a viable course of action. Read more
Related: FBI Raid in Georgia Is Part of “Trump’s Scheme to Try to Rig the Midterms.” By Ari Berman / Democracy Now
Black Journalists And Black Freedom Go Hand-In-Hand. By Anoa Changa-Peck / Newsone
Georgia Fort and Don Lemon, two independent Black journalists, were arrested for covering an anti-ICE protest in St. Paul, Minnesota.
The arrests of Black journalists Georgia Fort and Don Lemon offer a chilling reminder that freedom isn’t free. According to the Star Tribune, Fort was released late Friday afternoon after a federal judge rejected the government’s claims that she committed a crime warranting her continued detention. “As a journalist who has worked in media for more than 17 years, I leave this federal courthouse today with one question: Do we have a constitution?” Fort said upon her release. “I should be protected under the First Amendment, just like all of the journalists who I’ve been advocating for, too. I’ve been advocating for mainstream media journalists who have been brutalized for months.” Read more
Related: Don Lemon’s Arrest Is A Warning Shot At Black, Independent Journalists. By Stacey Patton / Newsone
‘You’re Going to Kill Me!’: Black Man Pleads for His Life As Alabama Cop Strikes Him with Flashlight, Bashes His Head Into Pavement, But That Wasn’t Enough, Video Shows. By Carlos Miller / Atlanta Black Star
A video that has gone viral on social media shows an Alabama cop bashing a Black man’s head into the pavement before punching him several times on the back of the head and striking him at least once with a flashlight.
Lundon Harkey, 37, also said he was pepper-sprayed in the face after three more cops arrived, who then placed a mask over his face, intensifying the effects of the pepper spray and making it more difficult for him to breathe, causing him to pass out. Read more and watch here
Why This Might Be a Grim Week for the Haitians of Springfield, Ohio. By Michael Tomasky / TNR
Their Temporary Protected Status ends at midnight on Tuesday. And now the question is: What will happen in Springfield on Wednesday?
The lies and calumnies escalated until September, when, on the basis of an unverified and untrue internet rumor, Vance charged that Haitians were stealing and eating people’s pets. “Reports now show,” he wrote, “that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who should not be in this country.” Read more
Education
Black, Latino admissions at top universities dropped after Supreme Court ruling. By Lexi Lonas Cochran / The Hill
A new analysis of admissions data from after the 2023 Supreme Court decision to axe affirmative action shows admissions for Black and Latino students at elite institutions declined sharply.
Class Action, a nonprofit for equity in education, analyzed 2024 federal enrollment numbers to find Black enrollment at the top 50 most selective schools was down 27 percent and Latino enrollment was down 10 percent. Read more
How Colleges’ Pursuit of a Diverse Professoriate Came Back to Bite Them. By Emma Pettit / The Chronicle of Higher Ed.
Kristina M. Johnson’s project was personal. Announcing a goal of hiring 100 underrepresented and nonwhite scholars, Johnson, then president of Ohio State University, drew on her background.
She described her experience as a young woman studying engineering in the 1970s. It took her a long time to realize she could become a professor, she said, because it was only men who taught her basic coursework. “I want every single Ohio State student to be able to look across the lecture hall or seminar table and understand immediately that their dreams are valid and achievable,” she said. What went underdiscussed is whether consideration of demographic (race and gender) factors in hiring crossed the line into legally or ethically dicey territory, and the possible repercussions if this private thumb on the scale ever came to light. Read more
Trump escalates Harvard feud with $1B demand. By Bianca Quilantan / Politico
The university is engaged in legal battles over the administration’s efforts to freeze billions of dollars in funding and stop the school from enrolling foreign students.
How this battle between Harvard and the federal government plays out and is resolved could shape how other colleges respond to federal probes. The Education Department has a list of 60 universities it is investigating over their responses to reports of antisemitic harassment and discrimination on their campuses. Read more
World
Don’t Fall For It: The U.S. Has Not Been Taken Advantage Of Since WWII. By Steve Forbes / Forbes
There’s a pernicious myth gaining traction that the U.S. has been taken advantage of by other countries since WWII, especially since the end of the Cold War, and that we’re less well off because of it. Actually, given the sobering realities of human nature and the countless conflicts that have plagued mankind from time immemorial, we and most of the world have lived through a golden age over the past 80 years. May we make as much progress in the next 80 years as we have during the last eight decades.
Whatever some may think, the U.S. has benefited mightily from the institutions we created and the economic and military arrangements we pursued after WWII. To state the obvious, mistakes, a number of them tragic, were made. But the overall upward trajectory of human progress has been remarkable and without precedent in history. Read more
A mix of hope and fear settles over Venezuela after US-imposed government change. By Regina Garcia Cano / AP
Time in Venezuela feels like it’s moving both too fast and too slow. The pillars of the country’s self-proclaimed socialist government are falling at a dizzying pace or not quickly enough. Economic relief is finally on the horizon or already too late.
Thirty days after the U.S. raid and capture of then-President Nicolás Maduro upended Venezuela, adults and children alike are still unsure of what exactly is happening around them. And as the initial shock gives way to a mix of uncertainty, hope and disappointment, a pervasive fear of another attack or more government repression continues to hang over them. Read more
Related: Cuba Rallies Residents, Prepares for War. By Marc Frank / The Nation
How Trump Took Up the ‘Christian Genocide’ Cause in Nigeria. Dionne Searcey, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Ruth Maclean and Eric Schmitt / NYT
Top advisers from the Trump Administration sat at the head of a giant wooden table in an office near the White House in late October listening as religious activists described attacks on Christian churches and pastors in Nigeria. The activists wanted President Trump to do something about it. On Christmas Day, Mr. Trump launched Tomahawk missiles at “terrorist scum” he said were responsible for killing Nigerian Christians.
Thousands are killed annually in Nigeria, and the victims include large numbers of both Christians and Muslims. The violence involves battles over land, kidnappings for ransom, sectarian tensions and terrorism, but the activists wanted Mr. Trump to see the conflict through a single lens: the persecution of Christians. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Religious voters are ‘recoiling at Trump’s cruelty.’ By Alex Henderson / MSN
Although President Donald Trump maintains a strong bond with far-right white evangelicals and Christian nationalists, his relations with Catholics, Mainline Protestants, Jews and other non-fundamentalists are much more complicated.
Some of Trump’s most scathing critics are known for being quite religious, from former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) to Sen. Raphael Warnock (a Georgia Democrat and Baptist minister). Read more
Related: Religious Leaders in Minnesota Say It’s Their Duty to Resist ICE. BLauren Jackson / NYT
A Theology of Immigration. Jay Caspian Kang / The New Yorker
Dan Groody, a Catholic priest and a professor of theology at Notre Dame, who spent years working in Latin America. In 2009, Groody published a paper titled “Crossing the Divide: Foundations of a Theology of Migration and Refugees,” in which he grappled with Imago Dei, the idea found throughout the Bible that human beings are created in the image and likeness of God. “None of us have a permanent residence here in this world,” the Reverend Dan Groody says.
Groody writes. “Defining the migrant and refugee first and foremost in terms of imago Dei roots such persons in the world very differently than if they are principally defined as social and political problems or as illegal aliens; the theological terms include a set of moral demands as well. Without adequate consideration of the humanity of the migrant, it is impossible to construct just policies ordered to the common good and to the benefit of society’s weakest members.” Read more
Were You There When They Crucified My Lord? Why so-called “Christian nationalists” have a Jesus problem. By William J. Barber and Jonathan Wilson-Hargrove
In the face of lies and totalitarian violence, Americans are standing up and standing together to reclaim our country. A mass movement of nonviolent noncooperation is growing, and it’s among the most important things happening right now (despite what you see on the nightly news).
It’s especially important that Christian teachers and preachers are offering visible leadership in the communities where they serve and are known by their people. And it’s important in this moral moment to say why. Read more
Historical / Cultural
Why Black History Month Matters At 100 More Than Ever. By Shannon Dawson / Newsone
This year marks the 100th anniversary of Black History Month. As we reflect on our stories, this centennial is not only a moment of celebration but a call to urgency, a reminder that protecting, preserving, and uplifting Black history matters now more than ever.
This February, we mark the 100-year anniversary of this incredible commemoration, and the work of preserving, protecting, and honoring Black leaders and communities is far from finished. Reaching this milestone is not just symbolic; it’s urgent. We are living in a moment where Black history is actively being censored in schools and other educational institutions, where DEI initiatives are under attack, and where deliberate historical erasure is becoming policy, not coincidence. Read more
Related: How Black History Month Changed America. By Shannon Dawson / Newsone
How a Slave’s Son Fought for Black Rights in Reconstruction-Era Louisiana. By Carl Rollyson / New York Sun
In a scrupulously researched biography, Nicholas Patler traces the achievements and shortcomings of a mixed-race politician who served as governor for 35 days.
P.B.S. Pinchback (1837-1921), governor of Louisiana for only 35 days, nonetheless managed to stabilize the position of a weakened Republican Party and enact several laws protecting the rights of African American citizens. He established a legacy that — while repudiated in his lifetime by the rise of Jim Crow legislation — remains an impressive fulfillment of the goals of Congressional Reconstruction. Read more
Tearing Apart ‘The Old Thread-bare Lie.’ By Marvin Olasky / Christianity Today
Officers of the City Railway Company came to the Memphis Free Speech office and pressured Wells to use the paper’s “influence with the colored people to get them to ride on the streetcars again.” Instead, she penned a bold editorial and, foreseeing the reaction, headed to New York.
The editorial began, “Eight negroes lynched since last issue … five on the same old racket—the new alarm about raping white women.” Her most potent paragraph: Nobody in this section of the country believes the old thread-bare lie that Negro men rape white women. If Southern white men are not careful, they will overreach themselves and public sentiment will have a reaction; a conclusion will then be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women.
The suggestion that some white women lacked virtue brought a sharp reaction from other Memphis newspapers. Read more
Why James Forman Still Matters. By Eric Morrison-Smith / The Progressive Magazine
James Forman was a revolutionary organizer, strategist, and movement builder who helped shape the Black freedom struggle into something more militant, internationalist, democratic, and explicitly revolutionary.
As executive secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Forman was a behind-the-scenes organizer who was deeply embedded in the work of the Civil Rights Movement. He helped organize sharecroppers, students, and poor Black communities across the Jim Crow South under constant threat of violence. Read more
We’re on the eve of what could be America’s final reckoning. By Thom Hartman / MSN
There is something deeply unsettling about Abraham Lincoln’s famous phrase “four score,” meaning 80 years. It’s roughly the length of a human life, but is also the interval at which the United States repeatedly collides with crisis and is forced to decide, again and again, what kind of nation we will be.
Historian Neil Howe explores this pattern in his book The Fourth Turning Is Here, arguing that every 80 years America reaches a sort of breaking point that ultimately hits on major issues like democracy or autocracy and oligarchy. Read more
In ‘Black and Jewish America,’ Henry Louis Gates Jr explores the history of Black-Jewish partnership and conflict. By Olivia Haynie / Forward
The new PBS series Black and Jewish America: An Interwoven History is not the first piece of media to investigate the relationship between the two communities. But what’s unique about the program, narrated by scholar and Finding Your Roots host Henry Louis Gates Jr., is that it doesn’t shy away from the historic complexities of this partnership — and the many times it almost fell apart.
Alarmed by the recent rise in white supremacist hate crimes, Gates reconnected with Paul Bertelsen and Sara Wolitzky, who had worked on some of his past projects and are co-directors and co-producers of the series. In the first episode of ’Black and Jewish America,’ Henry Louis Gates Jr. (third from left) sits down at a seder table with Black, Jewish, and Black-Jewish scholars and community leaders. Read more
‘Melania’ Backlash Causes Huge Surge for Michelle Obama Doc. By Ewan Palmer / Daily Beast
The 2020 film “Becoming” recorded tens of millions of viewing minutes as audiences stayed away from the first lady’s film.
The nationwide release of the Melania Trump vanity documentary has reminded audiences that they could be watching a movie about a first lady who actually lived in the White House. Viewership of Netflix’s film about Michelle Obama, Becoming, surged over the weekend, a period that coincided with the release of the widely panned documentary Melania. Read more
Byron Allen And Ava DuVernay Tackle MLK Assassination In New Film. By Robert Hill / Black Enterprise
On Jan. 30, media mogul Byron Allen and Oscar-nominated filmmaker Ava DuVernay confirmed a new feature film collaboration titled “King vs. the United States of America.”
The film focuses on Coretta Scott King’s journey and decades-long pursuit to get to the truth surrounding the 1968 assassination of her husband, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., who was killed on April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Read more
The Big Message of the 2026 Grammys. By Spencer Kornhaber / The Atlantic
Bad Bunny and many others used their time at this year’s ceremony to speak out against ICE.
Like a lot of immigrants lately—like a lot of Americans lately—Trevor Noah is mulling life after the United States. Early in this year’s Grammys, during an interlude between speeches and performances, the ceremony’s host asked Bad Bunny a question: “If things keep getting worse in America, can I come live with you in Puerto Rico?” Bad Bunny grimaced and stated the obvious: Puerto Rico is in America. Noah tried to shush him, saying, “Don’t tell them that.” Read more
Sports
Black coaches shut out of NFL hiring cycle says it all about team owners. By William C. Rhoden / Andscape
Ten head coaching vacancies. None filled by an African American candidate. Nothing to compel owners to give Black coaches an opportunity. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell will speak with the media on Feb. 2 at the Super Bowl.
At a time when the Trump administration has declared war on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), NFL owners — most of whom donate money largely to the Republican Party — seem to be making a statement. No longer compelled to cast a wide net to find the best candidate, the owners seem committed to whitening the head coaching ranks and making sure those ranks stay white for the near future. Read more
‘Satchel Paige wrote this’: One-person show at Carnegie Hall features legendary pitcher. By William Weinbaum / Andscape
One hundred years after he made his professional pitching debut, the extraordinary baseball career and life of Satchel Paige will be presented on stage Monday in a theatrical production at Carnegie Hall. Stage production an homage to Paige’s showmanship, wit and perseverance in face of racism.
“A Pitch From Satchel Paige,” a one-person show at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall, traces the Paige saga going back to reform school. From the 1920s until the ‘60s, Paige — believed to have been born in 1906 — performed in settings renowned and obscure throughout the Americas. Read more
‘This is a special game’: NBA Pioneers Classic gives league’s first Black players their respect. By Ron Thomas / Andscape
Families of Chuck Cooper, Nat ‘Sweetwater’ Clifton and Earl Lloyd on hand for inaugural game to start Black History Month. From left to right: Boston Celtics guard Jaylen Brown, Chuck Cooper III, Jataun Robinson, and Kevin Lloyd greet each other at half court before the inaugural NBA Pioneers Classic between the Boston Celtics and the Milwaukee Bucks on Feb. 1 at TD Garden in Boston.
Cooper knew that at the start of the 1950-51 season, his father, also named Chuck Cooper, along with Earl Lloyd and Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton had integrated the league. Beginning with Sunday’s first NBA Pioneers Classic game between the Milwaukee Bucks and Boston Celtics, Cooper’s disappointment has been permanently replaced with joy knowing that the league will honor his father’s accomplishments, along with those of Lloyd and Clifton, on Feb. 1 of each year to start Black History Month. Read more
Despite Steve Kerr’s Apology, Doc Rivers Refuses to Back Down from ICE Comments. By Caroline John / Essentially Sports
While Steve Kerr was publicly apologizing for his recent remarks, Doc Rivers made it clear he has no intention of doing the same. Asked again about his controversial comments regarding ICE and the Minnesota incident, the Bucks head coach doubled down on his stance, refusing to soften his language or walk anything back.
He was asked about comments regarding the January 7 incident in Minneapolis involving Renee Good. He defined it as “straight-up murder.” Almost a month later, he was asked if he meant in a legal or moral sense. Rivers confirmed his position without hesitation. “Both. And I don’t change that at all.” He emphasized that his perspective is formed by his personal connections to law enforcement, including his late father and a close friend, both of whom served as police officers. Read more
Trump’s EEOC Investigates Nike Over Vague Anti-White Discrimination Claims. By Zack Linly / Newsone
Trump-appointed EEOC chair, Andrea Lucas cited “compelling indications” that Nike’s DEI practices “may violate federal prohibitions against race discrimination.”
The EEOC said in a press release that it “seeks court order for information related to systemic race discrimination allegations that athletic footwear and apparel giant discriminated against white workers,” which it seems to be basing largely on the fact that the company maintains a diversity, equity and inclusion page on its website, which notes that Nike is committed to “creating a workforce that represents different backgrounds, experiences and perspectives.” Read more
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